Update February 2018
Heads up on two new fantastic freebies available to bloggers or those thinking about starting to blog. Good enough to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming!
They are from one of the gurus of blogging, Ruth Soukup, the founder of Elite Blog Academy. Grab the 2018 Blogging Trends Report and the guide to 120 Awesome Blog Post Ideas while they are available.
(This post contains affiliate links. If you should click through a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission to support this blog.)
Okay! I will be the first to admit for as long as I have been blogging, I still have had my questions about the proper use of hashtags with social media.
Nagging thoughts of am I hashtagging too little or too much? Am I using the right type of hashtags for the given situations? Well, I have finally had enough of this wondering and have gone in search of some answers. Figured while I am undertaking this journey, I should share what I learn so that it may clear up the hashtag dilemma for other folks, as well. Here is what I found out:
- Twitter and Instagram continue to be a great places to use hashtags. Limit your hashtags though to 1 to 3 and make sure they are highly relevant to your topic. If introducing a new, unique hashtag tied to your site or product, make sure to pair with a more popular mainstream hashtag.
- Facebook is amenable to hashtags, as well, but I gather not to use them with quite the amount and frequency that you would on Twitter and Instagram.
- (Update 2018) Pinterest is now supporting hashtags. You may use up to 20 per Pin description, but I personally stick to only 3 or 4. I feel that too many simply take away from the user experience and actually look spammy.
- Other popular sites that allow hashtags include Flickr, Google +, Orkut, Tumblr, and YouTube.
Want to research the popularity of specific hashtags and find alternate hashtag suggestions. Have a look at these sites:
- Hashtagify.me -I love that under the popular hashtags section, the site has a “breaking out” segment. A great way to catch trends and hot topics on the early end. Also, so neat that you can see top influencers for specific hashtag terms.
- Hashtags.org-An article on Sprout Social brought to my attention this site. Without paying, not a lot of advanced features are available, but the ability to look at the hourly traffic on a keyword is helpful for getting a feel for the popularity of individual keywords and the time of day that they are most searched for.
- KeyHole-Another great mention by Social Sprout. Type in a hashtag to search and get a sampling of recent mentions of the hashtag, when those mentions most occurred over a 24 hour period, who is doing the mentioning and their demographics, and related keywords and their relative popularity. Good stuff!
For more blogging tips:
I didn’t realize that about pinterest! Thanks for the great tips! 🙂
Yes! Pinterest treats hashtags a bit differently than most of the other social media sites that allow them.
Thanks for posting this…I’m new to the hashtagging world so I like learning about how to do it most effectively. One thing I know I can’t stand is having hashtags that are a million miles long or a post with 30 different hashtags!
Definitely agree!
I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate these hashtag tips! It really helped clear it up for me. 🙂
Lory
http://www.therobinsnestdesigns.com
So glad this hashtag article is helpful for you. Doing the research was certainly helpful for me.
Hashtags have always been a dilemma for me — where to use, how to use. The other question I’ve had — do they make a difference — can be checked with the sites you suggest. Thanks for the great information!
I really enjoyed researching this topic because I had always wanted some clear answers.
Hi Sarah
Great post! It’s being Featured this week at Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party. Thanks for sharing with us.
Angel
Appreciate it so much.
I am dropping by from Frugal Friday. Hashtags are my least favorite thing on social media! Overrated!
Well that does it … no more hashtags for my Pinterest descriptions!
Love the Hashtagify website. It is interesting to see what additional hashtags are used in association with the ones I primarily use.
I know I had a really hard time giving up hashtags on Pinterest because so used to inserting them on other outlets. Really has cleaned my descriptions up though and I think (no hard scientific evidence yet), I am getting repined better without them.
Just checked out hastagify.me. It looks like a really cool resource. Thanks for the great tips. 🙂 I have a love/hate relationship with hashtags, lol!
Yes, hashtags are one of those love/hate aspects of social media.